The good news is that the rotala seems to be growing well. In fact, unless the plant has uprooted, and it doesn't look like it has, several stems have grown to the water surface-which seems a tremendous amount of growth...

The other piece of good news is that the glosso seems to be growing pretty well.

The bad news is that it seems the blyxa is melting, badly. And the microsword is melting some, too...

Also, I am afraid the red rotala is turning green...

I knew this wouldn't go perfectly, so I guess I am hitting my first speedbumps. I assume there isn't much to do but wait it out. Either the melters disappear completely, or they make it. Either way, life moves on-if the blyxa disappears completely, I try again, either with another set of regular plants, or maybe with tc plants, since I understand they are less prone to melting. I think there is a better chance of the microsword pulls through. As for the red rotala turning green-I guess that is a wait and see dealio, too...

Any thoughts, advice, ideas or insight are more than welcome, and much appreciated.

Last edited by macdaddysinfo; 03-31-2013 at 04:28 AM..
Reason: added a pic

so this has been planted and flooded for a week. ph seems to range btwn 6 (with co2) and 6.6 (without co2), though I do no know how to see if the ph is lower, since yellow means 6 and that is the lowest the API kit goes. ammonia is at 2ppm (down from 4 earlier this week), no nitrates or nitrites, kh is 35.8ppm (2 drops) and the gh is 53.7 (3 drops). photo period 10 hours, with co2 at two bubbles per second (I might turn that down a touch since the ph and drop checkers are reading light green/almost yellow at times, which also seems to jibe with the chart smracer shared with me)...

it looks like some of that melting blyxa and microsword is coming back, and the glosso seems to be coming along. the rotala seems to be rolling, though i am considering adding some ECA to keep the butterfly red, but don't know if it is too early for that. I also think I might get some more Xmas moss for that right branch. other than that, I am going to let things go. I believe tomorrow and Monday will be my last daily water changes, and that I will move to evey other day after that...

oh, the manzanita driftwood has the fuzz fungus, but that seems to be nothing to be worried about...

any advice, insight or thoughts regarding my tank are much appreciated. thanks

Last edited by macdaddysinfo; 04-14-2013 at 05:40 AM..
Reason: changes

I moved the little bit of microsword that was behind the rock to the two big patches (between the rocks and in the back left corner) which frees up some more room for the clippings of butterfly rotala red in the back of the layout (you can see one of these clippings peeking out from behind the rock in the second pic). I also tied some more xmas moss to the manzanita and trimmed some of the glosso (though i was very conservative with the latter). So, after 2 weeks, the tank looks like this...

I was thinking you could trim the tops of the glosso (not to the bone) in a few days to promote horizontal runners. You can search it up on Youtube to see what I mean. I know ADA does this as shown in their NA Gallery video series. But I have to say be careful with glosso trimming, it is really hard to hit the perfect time to trim and hard to know how much to trim. Research is key here (so is trial and error). Otherwise, looks good!

I was thinking you could trim the tops of the glosso (not to the bone) in a few days to promote horizontal runners. You can search it up on Youtube to see what I mean. I know ADA does this as shown in their NA Gallery video series. But I have to say be careful with glosso trimming, it is really hard to hit the perfect time to trim and hard to know how much to trim. Research is key here (so is trial and error). Otherwise, looks good!

thx for looking, and for the input-it is much appreciated. i am looking for tips and vids on glosso trimming now; this scares me, but I know it is something I have to do and get used to, as it is going to be a regular chore with this layout...

so here is a pic of the tank at about two and a half weeks after planting, and immediately after it's first glosso trimming. i was very apprehensive about doing the trim, and i have no idea if i did it correctly-the YouTube vids i saw had people just hacking away at the stuff. anyway, if you have any ideas or comments, i am happy to read them, and truly appreciate the input...

oh, and thx to the mods for moving this thread to the proper subforum.

The tank has fully cycled, so I added some fauna this weekend. I started my school of Espei Rasboras, adding five specimens; I plan on adding between six to nine more, but the store didn't have that many in stock, so I bought what they had, and will likely add the rest in a fortnight. I also added a pair of Red Neon Rainbow Blue-Eyes. I am intrigued by this new species (Psedomugil cf. paskai "Red Neon") and so I wanted to try them out. They have taken quite nicely to their new environs, and I plan on adding two more pairs (maybe I get lucky and they spawn ). You can actually see these two in the picture above. Finally, I am planning on adding a few sparkling gourami; originally I had envisioned a pair of the pearl variety, but I think i have been swayed to choose the former. These are all additions to the existing cleanup crew that has been in residence for the last two weeks (3 Otos and 10 Amano shrimp).

The initial trim of the glosso seems to have gone well, as I see some new horizontal growth, and the carpet as a whole seems to be growing and healthy. The rotala continues to grow, and I have been trimming and replanting stems; I think it is now time to trim these plants more closely, shaping them as the "bush" that I have envisioned all along. The mini Xmas moss seems to be growing well, and the "tree" seems fine, especially now the Amanos and Otos have cleaned off that white fungus. I think I might split the needle leaf java fern to place some to the right of the base of the tree in order to fill in that space; as the fern continues to grow, these pieces should look like one big plant. Finally, the Blyxa and Microsword seem to be doing well, and there is little to no evidence of melting as the plants have acclimated to the tank. I think I might buy one more pot of Microsword to fill it in just a bit in the back left corner.

That is all I have to report. I look forward to any input, advice and insight you might choose to provide; I sincerely appreciate all the community input. Thanks for taking the time to check out this project.

Register Now

In order to be able to post messages on the The Planted Tank Forum forums, you must first register.
Please enter your desired user name, your email address and other required details in the form below.

User Name:

Password

Please enter a password for your user account. Note that passwords are case-sensitive.

Password:

Confirm Password:

Email Address

Please enter a valid email address for yourself.

Email Address:

Location

Your Location. As precise as you feel comfortable with.

Security Question

While balancing on a piece of wood, two inches by four inches known as a 2x4, John and his friend Sally both spotted a dalmatian inside of a truck with sirens. The animal with John and Sally is a _ _ _?

Insurance

Please select your insurance company (Optional)

Log-in

User Name

Remember Me?

Password

Human Verification

In order to verify that you are a human and not a spam bot, please enter the answer into the following box below based on the instructions contained in the graphic.